LEWISTON — Residents will decide whether to approve a $98.8 million spending plan for the Lewiston school district in a referendum vote Tuesday.
All voting will take place at Longley School on 145 Birch St. from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The ballot will contain three questions: one regarding the proposed school budget, a second which asks whether the school budget referendum election should continue in future years, and a third which asks whether residents feel the budget is “too high,” “acceptable,” or “too low.”
The third question is simply an opinion poll for the consideration of the School Committee and City Council to gauge resident’s thoughts.
The proposed $98.8 million spending plan is 7% higher than the current school budget of $92.2 million and would increase the local school tax by 0.90 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.
The owner of a Lewiston property valued at $150,000 would pay $135 more in school taxes this year under the proposal.
The budget was passed unanimously by both the School Committee and City Council.
Due to inflation and rising salary costs, school officials have said that reducing the budget any more than they have would mean cutting staff and student programs.
The district has already cut nearly $3 million and 36 positions from the original budget proposal.
“Making deeper staff cuts and having more kids in each classroom and offering less services is hardly a recipe for improving the outcomes,” School Committee Chairman Bruce Damon said in April. “If we’re going to create the kind of school system that we would really want to have, it costs money.”
“We’re three years in the making of inadequate funding locally,” Superintendent Jake Langlais said at the same meeting. “We’re doing everything we can to be as responsible as we can to every taxpayer, myself included, as a Lewiston resident.”
Editors note: A previous version of this article showed outdated figures. This has been corrected.
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